4/28/08

After a particularly rough Saturday night, I was driving to the mall the next day and saw this sign. I decided to stop in for a little hair of the dog to get rid of my headache.

I gotta tell you -- this was the worst bar I've ever been to. It didn't appear to be very popular ("happy hour" notwithstanding) and it didn't take me long to figure out why.

First of all, it was completely dead. I stopped in at around 11:20 am, and I was the only customer. Can you believe it? Not only that, but the jukebox must have been broken because you could have heard a pin drop in this place. I did see a microphone and some sort of keyboard, so I'm thinking they might have live music on Saturday night or something. Probably some old dude playing Billy Joel covers.

I don't know about Friday or Saturday, but there sure was a whole lot of nothing happening when I stopped in. The ambiance was pretty nice, I'll give them that. Lots of candles and low lighting. Probably more appropriate for a fancy restaurant than a bar, though.

I don't think they do much food business from the looks of it. There were a lot of places to sit, but no tables or anything. The bar was way the hell on the other side of the room, and the bartender was nowhere in sight. I walked up to the bar and stood around for a while waiting for him to show up and take my drink order, but after five minutes of that, my headache started getting the better of me. They really need to install a flat screen TV over the bar or something.

The decor was strange, too. The place was clean enough, but there were no stools, which I thought was pretty weird. And get this -- there was a full-sized sculpture of Jim Caviezel fastened to the wall behind the bar. It doesn't get much weirder than that. That guy always creeped me out a little, to be honest. Him and Willem Defoe. I'm not sure why.

At this point, I really needed a drink, so obviously I yelled, "Hey! How 'bout a little service over here?" and picked up some empty cup-type thing and started banging it on the bar. It was a pretty nice one, too. Heavy, and it almost looked like real silver. Most of the time, places that do a happy hour use cheap glasses or plastic cups because people tend to rip off the nice ones.

The banging got the barkeep's attention, let me tell you. He came flying out of the back room like his ass was on fire, and man, was he mad. He was wearing some sort of dress, so I'm not sure what I caught him in the middle of. The whole place smelled like incense and wine, so I guess anything is possible. Thinking about it later, I realized he didn't start to get violent until after I ordered the bloody mary.

Needless to say, I've been banned from this particular establishment.

But at least I have one of their bitchin' cups.

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The week so far wasn't a total loss though. I did learn a few things. No, you really don't want to know --it's just boring stuff. Really? OK, you're right, it probably will make me feel better. What? You want to rub my back while I type? Of course you can, if it means that much to you.

What I learned this week:

(1) Never fill out anything 'loan related' or 'car related' on-line. At least not with an e-mail address you plan on using ever again. Why? Spam count so far today: 120. Fuckers.

(2) Never get stuck on pager duty when the resident genius on your team is on vacation, and the other resident genius is off watching his wife drop a new kid. Why? Because you are fucked when something breaks, that's why. It's a very quick and effective way to realize how much you don't know outside of your specialty area. (Note to self: Learn more stuff, even if it's easier at the time to ask genius 1 or genius 2.)

(3) I need a new car, and the one I want is the one *everyone* wants and consequently, I can't find one. Why? Because it gets 36mpg, and some goatfucker with a rowboat and a rocket launcher can make gas prices go up ten cents per gallon over night if he waits for a tanker to chug by.

(4) Never put fish and hamburger in the kitchen garbage can the night before a really hot day. Why? Because your house will smell like a decomposing corpse when you get home.

(5) Never spray pine-scented air freshener in an attempt to get rid of the smell of decomposing corpse. Why? Because then it just smells like a decomposing corpse that someone hung in a Christmas tree.

4/15/08

Last night, my wife and I drove about an hour-and-a-half south to beautiful, boarded-up Poughkeepsie, NY to see a concert by Jack's Mannequin -- and so did approximately 1500 mascara plastering, low-rise wearing, effed-up-haired girls between the ages of 13 and 15.

Let's just say there was a shitload of this going on:

I have decided that if you ever have the urge to make yourself feel really old, the most effective way to accomplish this is to attend an 'all-ages' concert where the artist's fan-base consists primarily of girls in their early teens with pink hair and multiple piercings.

The doors opened at 7 pm and we got there about 6:45. The line was crazy -- it stretched all the way around the building for about two blocks. As we trudged to the back, I remarked to my wife about how there was a distinct lack of males standing in line. It had to be a one to 20 male to female ratio, easily. I leaned over and asked my wife, "Do you think it's possible that all these girls have a deep appreciation for brilliantly conceived, perfectly-structured pop songs performed by a young musical genius who has overcome tremendous adversity to practice his craft?"*

We immediately decided the answer was no, they mostly just wanted to dry-hump Andrew Mcmahon's leg.

My wife then said that I didn't stand out just because I was old; I stood out because I was the only one there who could grow a beard. I told Booby Mc-Booberson she could just shut it.

As we got closer to the door, we noticed that they were patting people down -- especially the guys. And not that cursory pat-down you normally get, where they run their hands down your sides and around your back and make you open your coat and turn around. There was major cuppage going on here, and you could see the bouncer thinking, "Car keys, cell phone, roll of life-savers, no wait - wow, that's a small penis.... ok, he's clean. Next."

Normally, this wouldn't be an issue, however for years I've carried a folding, clip-on pocket knife, and I rarely leave home without it. It's an automatic thing, like grabbing my car keys and my wallet, so of course I had it with me. I decided to chance it, since we were close enough to the car so that if they gave me a problem I could just run it back. So I unclipped it and slipped it into my front pocket, next to my roll of life-savers.

When we got to the door, the first bouncer checked our IDs (which was hilarious in and of itself) and gave us bracelets so we could drink, and the second bouncer who was doing the frisking took one look at me and just waved me in. Apparently, I'm now too old to be a threat to public safety, what with the osteoporosis and arthritis and what have you.

It was early, but I went to the almost completely empty bar and got a tanq and tonic for me and a coke for my wife, and then we decided where we wanted to stand for the next 5 hours. Most of the parents were up on the second level toward the back. We preferred to make them uncomfortable by standing with their children. We didn't get there early enough to get close to the stage, but we did manage to find some short 13 year olds to stand behind. One of them had a Canon digital camera that would have cost me a month's pay, but she had no clue how to use it. I tried taking a shot or two with my Blackberry but there should be a law against allowing them to call that POS a camera.

In writing this post, I was trying to figure out why he has the fan-base he does. Maybe because his other band is more So-Cal punk rock and he's been on a few festival tours and appeared on younger demographic TV shows like One Tree Hill. Still, other than at a very superficial level, his music doesn't really seem to match up with what's current and popular, at least to me. Even lyrically, the structure and content of the songs is not typical. He has much more in common with Ben Folds than he does with say, Good Charlotte. My wife thinks it might mean that today's youth are cultivating better taste in music and that there might be hope for the future, but I think it's just the whole leg-humping thing.

The show itself was amazing, and Andrew looks energetic and completely recovered. There was one thing I didn't count on, however. It seems that every little girl in the audience knew every word to every song. And they sang them. At top volume. Half the time, I couldn't hear Andrew himself singing because of the crowd. It was like a two-hour Sesame Street sing-a-long. Or a giant chorus of those tiny twin Asian chicks on the half-shell from the old Godzilla movies. Yeah, I know that's a reach, but anyone who has ever seen those creepy little broads will know exactly what I'm talking about. In other words, it was pretty fucking annoying.

A few of the highlights were some new songs from the upcoming CD -- which sound fantastic, by the way -- and an off-the-cuff acoustic version of "Woke up in Car" that he worked up right before the show. The song references Poughkeepsie, NY and he thought it a fitting song to play considering the club's location.

This is the first time in a while we've been to this club. The last time we were there, the "no-smoking in bars" law hadn't yet taken effect, and this club had always been notoriously smoky. If you didn't smoke, you might as well have taken it up because after spending 5 hours in this place, you'd have a 2 pack-a-day habit whether you knew it or not. This time around it was pretty cool. It was very odd to be able to watch a band without your lungs and eyes burning from the smoke. Granted, it was still incredibly hot in the room and there didn't seem to be much oxygen, but at least we didn't feel the need to burn our clothes when we left. Instead of smelling like a dirty ashtray, we just smelled like estrogen and bubble gum.

So even if you are old and dusty like me, I would still recommend seeing him live, with either Jack's Mannequin or Something Corporate. Bring your kids if you have them, borrow a neighbor's kid if you don't (tell them first) or just suck it up and go by yourself. It's definitely a show worth seeing.

---------------------------------------------------Visit more punk-rock juvenile delinquents over at humor-blogs.com. One click is all it takes.

4/11/08

I'm a big supporter of our military, and I think that regardless of your thoughts about everything that's going on in the world, it takes a certain kind of person to walk the wire and do what needs to be done -- and I, for one, am glad they are willing to do it.

I don't normally get political on this blog, because that's a shitstorm waiting to happen. I prefer to make people laugh instead. That being said -- if you get a chance, head over to Grunt's Blog and welcome him home. I never met him, or even traded e-mails with him, but he's a regular here and sometimes I feel like a complete douche when I complain about my day and then head over there and read about the crap that went down in his life during the same 24 hour period.

He's finally out of the shit and I'm sure his family and friends are extremely thankful that he made it home safe. He has a lot of life to catch up on now that he's back in the states, and his next hitch is non-deployable. Hopefully he'll get to roll around on some real grass with his wife this summer.

Anyway, make me feel like less of a whiny bitch and go wish him luck. Tell him Johnny sent ya.

Also, if you have a few extra bucks burning a hole in your pocket, consider this or this.

4/9/08

So we no longer have a hole in our roof, mostly due to my lovely wife, who brought home a stray roofer the other night. It's not behavior I would normally condone, but in this case she did what she had to do.

As I said in my comments on the last roofing post, the guy I originally wanted to come and look at it never showed up. I called and left a message asking him where the hell he was, but didn't get a call back. The next day he actually did call, and he explained that he and his wife were expecting a baby. Apparently, the baby-to-be had decided that maybe it wanted out. As a result, they had rushed to the hospital, where, after a few hours, the kid had decided it wasn't quite ready to hit the buffet just yet and instead wanted to hang out in the heated pool for a while longer. He told me he would definitely be up to check out the roof the next day.

The next day came and went with no roofer, and so I called and left another message. This guy then had the gall to call me from the hospital and tell me he didn't show up because his wife had a baby girl. Can you believe that shit?

So of course I told him that if he ever wanted to make anything of himself or his business, he needed to get his fucking priorities straight, because that was a good way to lose jobs right there.

I kid, I kid. I congratulated him, and he promised to stop by the next day to look at the roof, temporarily plug the hole, and work up an estimate to fix the rest of the vents. The next day also came and went, and I still had a hole in my roof. I was sympathetic, but I was thinking it was probably time to find a roofer who was getting more than an hour or two of sleep every night.

This is where my wife saves the day. She called me at work the next day and said there was a guy working on the roof there and she was pretty sure she had convinced him to come and look at our roof after he was done. I didn't ask how she worked this magic, and I'm not sure I want to know, but around 5:30 my wife pulled into the driveway followed by a guy driving a pickup truck full of ladders. He was a really nice guy, but I think he was regretting his decision when he finally got here. I could see him thinking "What the fuck did I get myself into? There's 2 feet of snow, they have a 12/12 pitch roof, it's getting dark and I'm an extra 30 miles out of my way."

I felt bad for him, so I helped him carry all his crap to the back of the house, then held the first ladder while he climbed up. When he was set, I handed up the other ladder, followed by a small stack of shingles and a 5-gallon pail of black goop.

He re-nailed the vent, put in the new shingles and gooped the hell out of everything. He did the whole job for $140. It was really just a quick fix and I realized that - I wanted to make sure that if it rained outside, it didn't rain inside.

That was when things got a little weird. As he was finishing up, the original roofer I had called pulled into the driveway. Of course, he immediately saw the truck full of ladders and didn't even get out of his truck. He just sat there for a few minutes, then backed out and drove away.

So yeah. It was awkward. We cheated on our roofer with some cheap floozy my wife picked up downtown. He came, he gave us a quick job, then he split with a handful of twenties.

I feel so dirty.

But on the other hand, it's raining tonight and our house is dry, so just call me Hugh Grant.

---------------------------------------------------As always, I am including a link to humor-blogs.com. They send a lot of traffic my way, as long as I stay at the top of the list over there. So help me out if you can spare the click.

4/4/08

This hasn't really been a funny week for me. I'm sitting here right now waiting for a roofer to come to my house and screw me. He's getting sloppy seconds because I'm still sore from the heating oil guy who pumped 158 gallons of Texas tea into my tank this morning to the tune of $600 bucks.

If you remember, we had a little bit of sheet-rock damage in the living room and bedrooms due to an ice dam on the front of the house. I finally got around to checking out the back of the house, and it turns out there's nothing good going on there either. Not only did the ice rip the gutter half off the house, it also pulled one of the roof vents off, leaving a neat 6" wide hole that empties directly into our attic space, which isn't something we have access to. Apparently because it was too small for them to put storage up there.

The house is built on a slope, so there's a walk-out basement. That means the roof is 3 stories up. It's also a cape cod style house, so it has a 12/12 pitched roof. That's 45 degrees, for all you non-builders out there (and "really fucking steep" for all you non-degree-knowers out there.) So that's where the screwing comes in. I don't think he's getting up there without being lowered by helicopter. I know, you're all thinking "Is he done bitching yet? His life is sooooo tough. Children are starving in Africa. Hell, they're starving here. "

That's all true. However, this is my blog and no, I'm not done bitching yet, thank you very much.

This next ice issue would be funny if it wasn't such a giant pain in the ass. For some stupid reason, my driveway is higher than my garage. After the ice storm, about 3 feet of snow came down and sat right on top of it. When we got that big thaw, the snow started to melt. When it melted, it ran into the garage, and when it hit the cold cement floor, it refroze. So I have approximately 2-3 inches of ice covering the floor in the garage, and everything is stuck to it. There compressor hoses and extension cords and a hammer that I can see, but can't touch. The ice is crystal clear, so the effect is pretty comical. I keep expecting to walk out there and see a frozen caveman staring up at me. Everything else -- cars, snowblower, generator, lumber, bicycles -- is completely frozen to the floor.

The other day when it was warm out, I opened the garage door hoping to thaw it out a little bit. A while later I walked outside and it was foggy inside the garage. I will be glad when this winter is over and done. The first thing I'm going to do in the spring is make sure that my driveway is no longer higher than my garage floor.

Speaking of being high, I was driving home the other day and saw this sticker:

I didn't think anything of it until I pulled up next to the truck and saw the company logo:

With pupils like that, I'm thinking meth.

In other car-related news, for the second time in 2 months my car has tried to kill me. The first time, the gas tank was dripping gas onto the exhaust pipe. I could have sploded, y'all. Then last week, I was on my way to an appointment when I heard a noise that sounded like someone hit my car door with a cannon-fired plunger. A few seconds later, I noticed the smell of burning rubber. You don't mistake that smell -- not with my background of abusing vehicles, anyway. Right about the time I thought "WTF was that?" my front tire let out a big gassy fart that sounded like "FWEEEEEEEEEEEP!" and I was suddenly riding on the rim doing about 50mph. I pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped, and got the jack and the spare tire out of the trunk.

At first, when I started jacking up the car, the car stood still and the jack sunk into the ground. I ran across the street and grabbed a flat rock off someone's rock wall. When I took the tire off, I just called and canceled my appointment because the only way my car was going to move from that spot was by use of a tow truck. The front spring had busted, and the break had an edge like a knife. In a few revolutions, it had neatly sliced all the way around the inside sidewall of the tire. This is what it looked like when I took it off:

Neat, huh? I didn't want the same thing to happen to the spare, so I called for a tow. While I was on the phone with the woman from the towing company, I realized that I was on a two-lane back road and had no idea what the name of the road was. We played a game of "name the nearest intersection" and I was losing badly. I sounded like a complete idiot. Finally, I asked a random jogger where the hell I was, and armed with that knowledge, I was riding shotgun in the tow truck 30 minutes later.

Sadly, I don't have much else to report. I know this is a weak post, and I promise I'll make it up to you. I'm thinking it's just about time for the sequel to the 1977 JC Penney's catalog. I've been postponing that -- mostly because I want it to be more like the sequel to Alien instead of the sequel to Weekend at Bernie's. I guess we'll see.

Check out humor-blogs.com for funnier stuff than this, and keep me in their good graces.